Teachers Reject Latest Offer

Vaughn Says Class Size, Salary Are Sticking Points

A Board of Education offer Friday to increase teachers` salaries 3 percent-and fire 1,700 employees to cover the cost-was formally rejected early Saturday by the Chicago Teachers Union, dimming hopes for an immediate settlement of the 19-day public-school strike.

The board`s offer, which it said was ``final`` and one which would cost $47.5 million, was based on a request from a coalition of 42 community and civic organizations that the board offer the teachers a 3 percent raise and restore three unpaid days off.

But the board later revised the offer to include making up the 19 days lost during the strike, essentially agreeing to a union demand that the number of school days be brought up to 184.

Bates then outlined a union counteroffer that included a demand for a 4.5 percent wage increase ``subject to further negotiation,`` reduction of class size by two pupils a class and payment for 20 strike days, including Labor Day.

The board`s initial offer was made to the teachers union after board members, School Supt. Manford Byrd Jr. and other school officials worked through Thursday night and into Friday morning to fashion a package of cuts that one board member said would ``ravage the system.``

CTU President Jacqueline Vaughn said the union would not accept the offer, was eager to resume negotiations and that the issue of classroom size and salary remained sticking points.

``We should be able to go forward; we`re too close to have a breakdown now,`` Vaughn said, indicating that the two sides were slowly inching toward a settlement.

Earlier Friday, when the proposal was presented to Vaughn, according to a source close to the negotiations, she said:

``The proposal is not worthy of a response, and if Dorothy Tillman can`t write any better than this-guided by the hand of the mayor-it is not worthy of a response.``

Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3d) was among 11 community and political leaders representing the coalition who met separately Thursday with Byrd, board members and the teachers` negotiating team to demand that a 3 percent compromise raise be accepted and schools be opened on Monday.

Tillman and other coalition members are closely allied with Mayor Harold Washington, who predicted a settlement after meeting with a protesting parents group early Friday.

``I think it will be done this weekend,`` he said. ``A settlement is close to fruition. It`s about to be closed.``

The coalition, whose spokesman is Leon M. Finney Jr., president and executive director of The Woodlawn Organization, warned that if schools are not open by Monday, the coalition will resort to tactics of 1960s civil-rights demonstrators to press its case.

Coalition representatives said the tactics might include thousands of children showing up Monday at school doors and staging sit-ins to dramatize the plight of a crippled public-school system.

The $47.5 million offer would give teachers a 3 percent raise retroactive to Sept. 1 and would restore the three days cut from the school year. But it would also create a complex rescheduling problem, not yet resolved, that might eliminate spring vacation and much of the two-week Christmas break.

The offer was outlined at a special board meeting by school board President Frank Gardner and by Byrd.

The superintendent said 1,272 full-time equivalency positions would be cut, with 302, or 7.7 percent, of central and district office jobs eliminated, and 970, or 3.3 percent, of 29,843 jobs in local schools.

Some positions were budgeted for only part of the year in an earlier $60 million budget reduction in July. Gov. James Thompson had reduced state aid to schools when the General Assembly declined to enact a state income-tax increase.

Though the cuts would be the equivalent of 1,272 full-time positions, Byrd explained, actually they affect some 1,800 positions. Fewer than 100 are vacant, meaning that 1,700 people would be fired to finance the pay increase. Byrd did not present all the specifics, but he said that ``it is important that parents and the citizens of Chicago realize exactly what is being sacrificed in order to give teachers a raise.`` Those sacrifices, in Byrd`s own words, include:

- Programs to enrich instruction, such as magnet schools and programs, community academies, desegregation programs, supplementary offerings and other classes beyond the essentials will be lost if new money cannot be found.

- Efforts begun in the last two years to improve overall instruction in reading and math will be seriously crippled.

- Assistance to the teachers in the classroom will be reduced, and many teachers will have less time for teaching.

- Students will receive less guidance in planning their education and their futures.

- Special education services will be severely curtailed, and personal services to children will be cut.